


The Highest Bidder

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Dragons, Explicit Sexual Content, Lewis Snart's A+ Parenting, M/M, Metahuman Leonard Snart, Mildly Dubious Consent, No Underage Sex, Sorcerers, but not really, kind of, not an alternate universe, spoilers through Left Behind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-22 00:26:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7411174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knew what They did with sorcerers these days. Through no choice of his own, Leonard Snart's about to learn all about it. </p><p>-</p><p>Response to tumblr prompt: kind-of AU where Lewis is auctioning off teenage Len, and Kronos has gone back in time and decides to buy Len (possibly originally to kill him), and leaves on his mask while they're interacting and adult Len only realizes who it was when interacting with Kronos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Highest Bidder

Len winces a little, old bruises still sore and new bruises pinching, as he drops down heavily to sprawl out on the mattress in the crappy apartment he’s managed to obtain, not even bothering to change out of his clothing. His apartment’s on the second floor where he can hear every goddamn car on the street outside, it doesn’t have A/C so this godforsaken autumn heat wave is choking him, and it’s the size of a closet, but it’s not too far from home (if he times it right, he can pick up Lisa in time to get her to school without his dad finding out) and, more importantly, it’s _his_. He doesn’t even want to think about the sort of shit his dad would get him into if he still lived at home, especially with the current Family succession crisis in the Darbyinians. The new Don’s still trying to solidify his standing and paying only his closest subordinates until he verifies everyone’s loyalty, and his dad’s got a quickly growing pile of debt as a result. As it was, Len hadn’t managed to get out of the house fast enough tonight to avoid getting a serious bruise on his shoulder from a ‘friendly’ hello as he was ducking out. 

He hates it when his dad is friendly, even or perhaps especially when he’s rough about it. It manages to both make Len doubt everything he’s learned and accepted about his dad in the last twenty years of his life, turning him back into that stupid five year old who couldn’t wait for his father to come home from prison, and it also makes him extremely nervous, because it usually means his dad wanted something from him, and that was never good.

He hates leaving Lisa there, but if he tries to take her away, his father would slap him with a kidnapping charge faster than he could blink. She needs that high school diploma that he’d never gotten if she’s going to make something better of her life than he’d made of his – she’s so close now, _so close_ , to aging out of dad’s care legitimately – but that means she can’t be on the run with him. She needs to stay where she is, keeping her head down and staying out of Dad’s way, especially when he’s drunk and planning something like he was tonight. 

At least Len has his own apartment and doesn’t have to deal with his dad this evening. Len closes his eyes and quickly falls asleep.

He doesn’t see the shimmer in the air above the street in front of his apartment, or the appearance of a large, bulky ship that settles down without a whisper of sound.

He doesn’t see the man, dressed in ahistorical armor and a battered steel mask, wrapped in a cape, walk out of the ship, which wavers and disappears behind him.

He doesn’t see the man stand there in the street, staring straight up at Len’s little patched-up excuse for a window and no other. 

He definitely doesn’t see the man start, as if being told something by an invisible voice, and turn away, muttering, “Not _now_ , damnit,” in a low mechanized growl. He doesn’t see the man activate something on his arm that encases him in a shimmering shield of green just in time for the ripples in reality echoing down through time encompass the whole world in a flood of unseen light.

He doesn’t see his world twist and change, contort as millions and millions of decisions are changed, crucial steps taken now unmade, the fork in the road bent the other way, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have remembered it, anyway.

The new Timeline stabilizes.

\-------------------

Len wakes up abruptly and unpleasantly as several pairs of hands reach out and grab his arms, pulling him violently out of the makeshift bed he’s been using. He cries out and instinctively tries to struggle, but he’s still mostly asleep and can’t seem get all his limbs to move properly, the hay used as stuffing in the pathetic excuse for a mattress the flophouse offers flying into the air as he gets shoved down onto his knees beside it.

Len doesn’t know who they are or what they want, but he knows it’s not going to be good.

Len tries to hit the person to his right with his elbow, eyes still thick with sleep and squinting into the sudden brightness coming from the door and window, and gets a kick in the gut that doubles him over in pain for his efforts. He gasps, all the air knocked out of his lungs, but, swallowing the pain, Len throws himself the other direction a second later, trying to head-butt the other guy hard enough to destabilize him and knock him down, hoping to create enough room to get away.

This time he gets a knee to the cheekbone. The pain makes little starbursts appear before his eyes.

“Keep it below the collar, you moron,” he hears a familiar voice snap. “Too many bruises’ll make the value go down.”

“Dad?” Len croaks, trying to force his eyes to focus on the room.

It blurrily swims into view. His dad’s standing by the door, backed by two enforcers, glaring at one of the two guys that have their hands on Len’s shoulders and arms, immobilizing him by forcing him down heavily on his knees. Three of the four of them are huge, easily twice Len’s size, big vacant-eyed brutes that Len usually avoids like the plague. They weren’t wearing any heraldry badges at all: too stupid to get licensed as hired mercenaries and too brutal to join up with an army full time, the very definition of the bottom of the barrel. Len knows the type. He’s seen his father use them before. 

The last guy, standing by his father’s side, is thinner, with a face like a horse, but he had a licensed technician’s badge; that’s when Len knew that trying to escape was pointless. Fucking magic users. 

“What’s going on, Dad?” Len demands, swallowing hard to try to clear his voice and trying to figure out what his dad’s eternally mysterious intentions were. “Get these guys to let go of me; we’ll talk it out, whatever you want.”

“Not good enough this time, son,” his dad says, crouching down to look Len over with a speculative expression in his eyes that Len really didn’t like. He’s wearing his Darbiniyian badge, a sign that he was on duty to the local black-hat Lord and his family instead of to the City of Central. Maybe the City’s finally gotten wise to his dual loyalties and withdrawn his policeman’s badge entirely, but Len doubts it. 

“What, you need something stolen?” Len asks, hoping it would just be something like that but doubting it. His dad wouldn’t need to use thugs on him just for that. He has access to Lisa; that’s enough. But maybe… “I can do that for you, you know I can; it doesn’t matter what type of magic they’ve got set up to guard it. Just say what it is, but I can only do it if you don’t let them break my goddamn _arm_.”

“Sorry, son. There’s nothing in this City that you’ll be able to steal in time for me to pay my debts back to the new Lord,” his dad says, almost regretfully. He reaches out and grabs Len harshly by the chin, twisting his head this way and that. “Not bad,” he says, the regret quickly sliding out of his voice, replaced by that damned tone of greed and speculation. “You finally grew into those stupid ears. Hmm. What do you think?” he asks the magic technician. 

The guy laughs nasally. “He’ll get a good return, no doubt about that,” he says confidently. “Pretty eyes, prettier mouth.”

Len’s throat goes dry.

Sure, he’s heard comments like that before, both that year he’d been tossed in juvie hall after his own goddamn dad arrested him to divert attention from his own involvement in that heist and that one time he’d had to spend a few months down the river involuntarily enjoying the hospitality of the Iron Heights castle after he’d missed one of those new ‘recording devices’ that the city Daedalus had come up with, the fucker. 

Some of the bastards in Iron Heights had even jibed him about trying to find him on the outside, paying him – or his dad – a pretty penny for the use thereof. He’d brushed it off.

And of course in juvie it hadn’t been a problem because of…

But this is his _dad_.

“Dad?” he says, hating how his voice wavers. 

His dad ignores him and rises to his feet. “Get a pacifier on him and let’s move,” he snaps. “We’re going to be late otherwise, and I want it done today.”

“Dad!” Len cries out. “What are you _doing_?”

His father looks at him disapprovingly, and Len _hates_ how his dad’s disappointment still stings even when it’s looking a lot like his father’s planning to rent him out as a whore. The technician steps forward, pulling out a magic device – they look like a pair of disconnected steel bracelets, four inches wide, but Len knows that once they’re strapped onto his wrists he won’t be able to pull them apart with force and there’s no lock-picking that will help him – and starts muttering the activation words. 

“You know I’m not going to cooperate,” Len points out, desperate to try to get some sense into his father’s head. “Whoever you’ve made a deal with. Doesn’t matter how pretty I am; they won’t like it when I kick them in the balls a few times. They won’t pay you. I won’t cooperate, no matter what they do.”

“You won’t really have much of a choice,” his dad says, shrugging. “Slaves generally don’t. Sorry, kid, but that’s the way it is.”

Ice shoots up Len’s spine.

“You can’t sell me,” he says, nearly mute with horror. “You can’t. Slavery was outlawed years ago.”

“For normal people, sure,” his dad says. “But not for sorcerers.” 

Len doesn’t bother arguing that he _isn't_ a sorcerer; son of a policeman, and more to the point, the son of a poor black woman, he knows better than most about how evidence can be faked, how the Process worked, too much to even bother with the protests. He starts struggling again instead, desperate to get out. The grunts on each side of him both turn and kick him in the ribs, one putting his heavy boot on Len’s anklebone and grinding down until Len cries out in pain. The technician manages to get the bracelets locked onto Len’s wrists and barks out orders to the thugs. One thug shoves Len’s head down until it cracks against the wooden floorboards and the other twists his arms back until the bracelets are within inches of each other.

Ears ringing, Len barely hears the technician finish the activation spell, but he feels his wrists snap together with a burst of agony as his shoulders are both wrenched around in their sockets by the force of the magic. 

He twists his head around on the ground and just manages to see, out of corner of his eye, the technician pull out another magic device – a hand-sized square box with two prongs that Len is unfortunately quite familiar with. “No!” he cries out, unable to help himself, even knowing he’ll probably get boxed around the ears by his dad later for that admission of weakness.

“Look on the bright side,” his dad says somewhere above him. With his face still pinned to the ground, Len can’t see any more of him than his boots. “Your sister tested negative for the sorcerer gene, or I’d have sold her instead. As it is, I may as well leave her in that stupid school of hers for now, see if she develops some skills. Who knows, she may actually become useful one of these days.”

Len scarcely has time to be grateful before the technician presses the box to his side, the sound of captured thunder crackling as it shoots a bolt of lightning through his entire body. His body spasms uncontrollably, his eyes rolling back into his head, and then everything goes black.

\--------------------

Len wakes up in a cage.

Not in a prison cell; he’s at least somewhat familiar with those, but rather one of the goddamn glass-and-steel monstrosities that make up the outer ring of the local Daedalus’ headquarters, STAR Tower. The eight-by-ten boxes where they keep the sorcerers, each box designed to match and nullify a person’s specific ability set. 

They hadn’t yet managed to find a way to predict what sorcerous powers a person would develop once exposed to the Process, if at all, so Len’s walls don’t have any special guards on it that he can perceive. Not like the black woman down the way, who stares blankly at her walls in a way that speaks of one-way mirrors before disappearing and reappearing a few feet away in a burst of smoke. Not like the man who is curled up in a corner of his cell, tossing a ball around, giant clamped-on temperature modifiers filtering his air and keeping it steady. 

Len’s hands are still bound behind his back, so he can’t even try to see if he could maybe try to hack into the doorway controls from the inside. Len seriously doubts that he could – the Daedalus probably had magic recorders on him at this very moment and would come and stop him if he tried – but it would have at least given him something to do. Even a little bit of freedom, illusionary as it might be, is better than none.

Len licks his dry lips at the thought of being trapped in here in this claustrophobic fishbowl of nightmares for who knows how long. They did that, sometimes, if they couldn’t find a buyer willing to take charge of you or if you caused your buyer too much trouble. They just locked you away, nominally for “rehabilitation”, but really…well. No one ever _really_ rehabilitated a sorcerer. 

Once in a while a lucky one escapes; Len’s heard about those. That’s more or less the best Len can hope for; a fatuously kind or inattentive owner and a useful set of powers that would help him get away. Theoretically, after a year, if you haven’t developed sorcerous powers, you’re supposed to be released as someone with an inactive expression of the sorcerers’ gene, but unsurprisingly it doesn’t seem to happen that often. And those infinite few that are released are still marked; they’ll have to look over their shoulders every day of their lives to make sure no one tries to “recapture” them as an escapee.

One of the people in his group of cells, the ones around him – he can’t see them as clearly as he can see the ones down the way, the ones who are already sorcerers – is screaming. Len can only barely hear him or her through the glass and metal. Len wonders if they’re claustrophobic or just afraid.

“Attention, please!” an altered voice echoes throughout the complex. They’ve managed to weave voice projection throughout the building, of course they have. Why is Len surprised? This is the Daedalus’ Tower, of course it has all of the most up-to-date magic gadgets. “You have all be identified as possessing the sorcerers’ gene and as demonstrating latent indications of positive sorcerous traits. As a result, you will be processed into our records and, subject to League Decree 1342, put up for auction to a suitable buyer who will assist you in developing your abilities for the public good –”

Len snorts at that piece of bullshit. Ever since the Process was developed to activate latent sorcerous abilities, the abilities that people would otherwise have lived their whole lives happily without ever knowing about, the original justification that sorcerers are “public dangers” and need to be controlled for the benefit of society is growing ever more transparent. The auction system had started because the local nobility wanted some powerful weapons of their own against unspecified outside threats and the League didn’t want to pay for the upkeep of all the sorcerers, so the nobility got ownership in exchange for paying for the sorcerer’s living expenses and training costs. Now, of course, they weren’t exactly at war with anyone, between the League’s merciless subjugation of its enemies and the equally ruthless diplomacy afterwards, so it’s really just an excuse to own someone with special powers. A sign of wealth and status, or worse, the ones who found a _use_ for it.

“– please remain calm and do not resist the processing agent. Any attempt to cause injury to the agent, to your neighbors, or to yourself will have severe repercussions. Please remain calm and answer all questions –” 

As the voice calmly drones on, detailing the process and procedures they would endure, everyone in the cells around Len bursts out yelling and screaming and begging to be let go and saying it was a mistake. Len just closes his eyes and rests his head against the glass. Asking for help never works. Not once.

He opens his eyes when he hears the audible swish of the large outer doors opening. It’s the local Daedalus himself, Harrison Wells, inventor of the Process and of a million other things, along with several of his agents and, tagging along as always, the STAR Tower sorcerer, Barry Allen. Christ, Len’s heard about the poor kid; his sorcerous power is speed and Wells uses him ruthlessly to capture any escapees. The kid had to be, what, thirteen by now? 

Len wonders if the kid even remembered what life was like before the Process was invented two years back, how his mother had been murdered, his father framed, and himself delivered into the hands of the state and used for the very first test runs of the Process, or if Wells had managed to override that. The ‘Flash’, as he was nicknamed, certainly presented the face of a loyal tamed sorcerer, obedient to the public good, self-sacrificing and heroic and standing as the sole beacon against the rest of the ‘dangerous’ sorcerers, to the world at large. The perfect end result of the Process. 

Inside of STAR, though, the kid’s wearing pacifiers, just like Len’s, and a sorcerer’s suppression collar, so Len’s going to guess that it isn’t as happy behind the scenes as it is out where people can see them. 

One of the agents stops in front of Len’s cell and asks him a few questions – name, date of birth, place of birth, height, weight, history of sexual activity, level and location of any schooling, any heraldry associations he’s part of, etc. Any question he doesn’t answer, the walls of the cells shock him nearly as bad as that original lightning strike with the box, but without the benefit of unconsciousness. When they’re done asking questions out loud, the room fills with gas – hello, brand new phobia – and when he wakes back up they have his fingerprints on a sheet of paper, a vial of his blood (he has a set of brand new needle marks in his arm), and a cotton swab shiny with sweat or spit, and he _really_ hopes that’s all they were doing. 

He catches the Flash’s eye briefly and they both look away. 

They leave him alone after that. By the next morning, their results will have been run through the system and they’ll be ready for auction.

Len isn’t ready. Len isn’t ready at all. 

\----------------------

The morning of the auction dawns bright and clear, as best as Len can tell from where he’d woken up, pacifiers on his wrists and ankles clinging to the bench he’s sitting on. There are nine of them up for sale today – three pre-solds, the sorcerers Len had seen the other day that already had their powers and who had already gone for auction once before only to be overlooked, and six of them, including Len, that are brand new. You can tell because their necks are bare of the inevitable suppression collars.

They are all sitting on the stage in front of STAR Tower, the auction point. Len hadn’t frequented it before now, having no money and no taste for other people’s despair, but he knows the basics of how this works. There’s the block where the sorcerer kneels, the podium where the Daedalus stands and speaks, the sinister upright rod of the sorcerer’s brand stuck next to it like a sword. The crowd of interested buyers and onlookers gather in an unruly crowd before the stage, with the more important buyers – the local black-hat lords, of course, like Lord Darbyinian or Dame Santini (scandalously without her husband, because women’s liberation is one thing but everyone’s always looking for a new reason to gossip); the politically influential but mostly just rich folks like the Rathaways, looking as ever for another tutor for their “deficient” child; interested business people, like the leader of Starling’s mercenary guild, Slade Wilson, out on the hunt for more men if he could get them at a cheap price – taking up the more comfortable pavilions for their viewing pleasure.

Looks like they’re pretty full up today, which Len ascribes to there being six new ones at once – even STAR Tower usually doesn’t have a haul this big, usually it’s more like one or two – and it even looks like they are being graced with the presence of one of the League’s Representatives, if Len reads the heraldry flags right. He wonders which one it is.

Almost in answer to his thoughts, a carriage rolls into the square, a Palmer-made mech-magic dragon perched on the roof, nearly running over people not quick enough to dodge out of the way, and when it comes to a stop, trumpets blow like thunder and they emerge. Len’s eyebrows arch involuntarily in interest. 

It’s the Heir to the Demon herself, Nyssa al Ghul. She’s usually located in Starling, the origin of her youthful Beloved, who is of course there, a step behind her as always, dressed in gauzy white silks so fine that all of Len’s earnings for an entire lifetime wouldn’t be enough to buy a single yard. They must have been in Central on business or pleasure and decided to stop by to see the auction. 

Wells appears on the stage, trailed by the Flash and his apprentice Daedalus, a promising young inventor which Len vaguely recalls as being called Ramon, and smiles ingratiatingly at the Heir. “Welcome to our humble city, my Lady,” he calls. “I trust you will enjoy yourself today.” Smile spreading on his face, he turns to the crowd and begins to lay out the rules of the auction – bids will only be accepted as valid once it is confirmed that the sorcerer in question has survived the Process; a bid could only be indicated by raising a hand instead of merely shouting; all bids were due to be paid immediately at the conclusion of the auction, with the usual half going to the family of the sorcerer in compensation for the loss of their labor and half to STAR Tower for maintenance and processing fees, etc. Len doesn’t pay much attention and spends the time scanning the crowd to see who’s out there, which unfortunately seems to be everyone.

There are a _lot_ of people he doesn’t want to be owned by.

To be honest, he doesn’t want to be owned by _anyone_ , but there’s a few people that he would rather kill himself than belong to. Quite a few, even.

Wells finishes his whole spiel and the auction begins. Not the auction. The Process. Len’s not the first one on the block, so he gets to watch the whole horrific Process from start to finish.

The guy next to him, a skinny black-haired guy who’s a bit taller than Len, gets picked to go first. The pacifiers on his arms and legs snap off the bench with a single click of a button on Wells’ wand – a flat square tablet-like device that Wells jabs at with his fingers – and before the guy can do anything there’s a crackle of lightening and he’s kneeling before the block, ankles locked down to the placeholders there, wrists snapped to the sides of the large wooden square of the block. The crowd hollers in approval. 

Fucking Flash. The guy doesn’t stand a chance. 

The crappy grey shirt they’re all given is removed so the guy is shirtless (Len isn’t looking forward to that) and then it begins. Wells starts the Accelerator, the metal circle underlying the block, and it whirs warningly as it rises from the ground. Wells gestures and the Accelerator sparks and suddenly the guy’s skin is _bubbling_ , his eyes glowing red as something black which stinks of tar starts dripping down from his hairline as his mouth rounds in a silent scream – and then the spark is gone and it’s just the guy, still on his knees, still strapped in.

A little preview of the man’s sorcerous powers, the potential theoretically locked away inside his genes. It’s still unclear if he’ll survive the Process – Len heard that the Flash himself was in a coma for months before his speed was discovered, though obviously they’ve refined the process in the two years since – but it’s a little peek into the what might be. 

Len would be in awe of the Daedalus’ powers if he wasn’t so fucking terrified of them.

“Now,” Wells says, smiling proudly at the guy shaking on the block the way Len looks at a properly completed set of heist plans, like it’s a job well done and full of anticipation for what’s going to come next. “Let’s begin the auction.”

There’s a bit of back and forth at first, but to no one’s surprise, Wilson steps in and makes the final bid, well above the level that the merchants in the crowd can afford but well below what the others in the rich set can afford. Powers relating to boiling tar is an easy gimme for security or army work, and the mercenary’s guild has the funds and powers to handle his training. They might end up selling him to the army if he’s not subtle enough for them, but Wilson’s clearly seen enough to be intrigued and the rich buyers rarely fight over a sorcerer with unusual powers. Len’s disgusted to find himself pleased by it; Wilson’s rarely willing to spend that much on a single auction, and he would’ve been a terrible master. Not only would there have been virtually no chance of escape, Wilson would’ve likely taken him to the guild’s training grounds outside of Central and then there’d be no chance of getting back to Lisa, ever.

“The usual mark?” Wells calls and Wilson inclines his head in agreement. This is the part Len’s always hated the most.

To activate latent sorcerous powers, Wells explains (for the millionth time) to the entranced audience, you need to infuse a sorcerer with what Wells describes as “dark matter.” The activation itself is terrifying, a whirl of yellow light circling the guy as the Accelerator clicks into unrestrained action. Wells enters a few instructions on his wand and pulls the brand out of its waiting place. It’s glowing dull red and now has the mercenary’s guild’s bisected bullseye symbol at the head of it. The yellow light explodes upwards from the circle, encompassing the man within, and Wells skillfully presses the brand to the guy’s back as the guy shrieks in agony as the dark matter is literally burned into his body. 

The light shuts off and the man collapses, shaking. He’s moving, so he’s alive; that puts him ahead of the game for sorcerers going through the Process – and now, at last, he’s available for sale. Ramon edges forward, looking distressed like he has anything to fear, and snaps the power-suppressing collar onto the guy, pushing a few buttons on it until all the locking lights go on, and then Wells’ agents drag the guy off the stage to be handed off to Wilson’s people after the auction ends. 

The next person to go through the process is a redheaded girl.

She sells well – she’s attractive enough and women sorceresses are typically (if without any reasonable basis) seen as more “passive” and “easier to control” then male sorcerers. Plus her power seems to be centered in her eyes, which glow blue in the preview, and that could signify anything from some mental power to laser eyes to good eyesight – but she dies on the block, blood spilling out of her mouth and ears, her body spasming uncontrollably as her nervous system shakes itself apart. Not everyone is compatible with the dark matter.

Flash makes the body disappear in a blink of an eye and the crowd, disappointed by not seeing another sorcerer, cheers at the sight of the familiar red streak. 

The buyer, a merchant from the crowd, shakes his head and returns to his seat. No bids are accepted as valid until the sorcerer is proven to have survived, after all; that was the very first rule Wells laid out.

And then Wells points at Len.

\----------------------------------------

The click of the pacifiers unlocking sounds like a death knell.

A second later, he’s moving faster than sight itself in the arms of a child and the Flash whispers “I’m sorry” in his ear before disappearing back to stand beside Wells. 

Len doesn’t flinch when they pull off his shirt because he won’t give them the satisfaction, but then the Accelerator whirs to life and he has no idea what his “preview” is but he feels so very cold, bone-chillingly cold, cold enough to snap into a thousand pieces; cold enough to make him bit his lips involuntarily. Thank god it’s only for a second, and then he’s back, trapped on his knees before a hungry crowd. 

“His name is Leonard Snart. He’s in his mid-twenties and in good physical condition, with no illnesses or major injuries. He has excellent eyesight and hearing; his teeth are in good condition as well. He is approximately six feet tall, black hair, and a very attractive pair of eyes of indeterminate color–” Wells begins reading off Len’s statistics to the crowd, pumping them up, and Len is left there shaking and thinking, was that comment about his eyes _really_ necessary? 

Lord Darbyinian, his dad’s black-hat boss, leans forward in his seat, the first sign of interest he’s shown in these proceedings. His eyes scan Len from top to bottom and Len’s starting to get a sinking suspicion he knows who gave his dad the idea of how to make up his debts. Sure, Darbyinian would probably be able to get to him either way, but this way Len can’t exactly run off no matter what he does. 

Len tries to think of the bright side, which is that he’ll still be in Central City. That’s literally it, the only bright side of this he can imagine, and he steels himself.

Darbyinian lets a few of the small-time merchants bid because he’s an egotistical bastard that doesn’t think anything has value until someone else expresses an interest, but after a few minutes and a moderate increase in price – enough to pay off dad’s debts even with him only receiving half, won’t he be happy – he waves his hand and the merchants go quiet.

“Thank you, my Lord,” Wells says respectfully. “We have a bid from Lord Darbyinian, does anyone else –”

He abruptly stops.

Len glances around to see why – and the Beloved of the Demon’s Daughter has raised her white-clad hand, staring right at him with a faint, unreadable smile. She can’t be more than eighteen; probably closer to sixteen if he’s being honest. Len has no idea why she’s bidding.

“A bid from the Beloved,” Wells says, looking pleased at the prospect of a rich man’s bidding war. “Lord Darbyinian, do you have a counterbid?”

Darbyinian looks peeved that his low bid has been upstaged, but he inclines his head and waves his hand, calling out a more reasonable number.

“My Lady, would you like to bid again?”

The Beloved exchanges a long, thoughtful look with the Heir. The Heir nods her permission and the Beloved smiles and waves her hand again, gesturing to indicate that she’ll not only bid, but that she’ll outbid at the regular interval unless she signals that she’s had enough.

“Excellent. Lord Darbyinian –”

“Don’t bother,” a rough voice calls out from the crowded area before the stage. “I’ll take him for twice that.”

Len boggles a little at the thought of a number that size and looks to see who in the hell could afford that but chooses to still stand in the cheap seats. His eyes flicker through the crowd frantically, seeing mostly confused faces, impressed faces, contemplative faces…

There’s a masked man standing right in the center of the crowd, a gap in the mob of people starting to form around him as people try to subtly edge away. He’s wearing armor like Len’s never seen before, a cape draped down his back, and the badge of heraldry he wears is an hourglass.

The sigil of the Time Masters, the sole institution remaining that even the League fears. 

“My Lord Kronos,” Wells says in surprise and not entirely in pleasure. “We welcome you, and gladly. The Time Masters have never frequented our auctions before.”

The man – Kronos – snorts in disgust. “No need to trouble yourself with any concern,” he says, his voice creaky and mechanical. “I’ll take him and be on my way.” He pauses for a long moment. “Wells.”

Wells nods. There’s something there, something Len’s seeing but doesn’t have all the story pieces to put together, but Wells’ ever-present calm demeanor is shaken, just a little. He fears the Time Masters too, it seems.

“Very well. Are there any other bids?” he asks. “Lord Darbyinian? My Lady?”

Darbyinian scowls in disappointment but shakes his head. He’s not going to bid against someone with the untold resources of the Time Masters, who supposedly can fabricate gold from thin air and who can go back to smother you in your crib if you anger them.

Nyssa al Ghul is not so easily deterred. “My Beloved wants him,” she says smoothly. “And I am accustomed to granting her wishes. Will you yield?”

“Blondie’s always had an eye on what isn’t hers, especially at this age,” Kronos says with an audible sneer. “No. I’m not gonna _yield_. He’s mine.”

Nyssa’s mouth goes flat with anger.

Kronos laughs, a harsh hollow sound that rings beneath his mask. “You can always buy your Canary something else,” he says, and Nyssa starts like he’s said something a lot more meaningful than what he actually said.

“Very well,” she says quickly, not looking at her pouting Beloved. “I yield my claim.”

Wells nods. “For your mark – the hourglass, I presume?” he asks.

“No,” Kronos says, reaching out and jabbing his fingers at his bracer in the same manner that Wells does on his wand. “A circle with a flame in it. Consider it more of a personal mark – oh, don’t worry, _Wells_ , I’ll program your brand for you.”

“I’m very much obliged,” Wells says, sounding nothing of the sort. He pulls out the brand, which now is configured just as Kronos had ordered, and taps the sequence into his wand.

And then there’s a burst of light and that endless cold and then there’s abruptly an agonizing burning pain right between his shoulder blades. Len forgets himself and screams and screams and screams – 

He doesn’t die.

He’s not sure if that’s a good thing. His back is sore as hell and his head is ringing and he’s definitely bleeding from his nose, but he’s had worse. Maybe. It’s pretty bad. He might be in shock.

The snap of the suppression collar around his neck wakes him back up pretty fast, as do the hands that grab him by his upper arms and drag him away from the block.

Kronos is waiting impatiently at the bottom corner of the stage instead of waiting to pick him up at the end of auction when they’re all nicely sedated and packaged up to be taken home.

“Well?” Kronos barks at agents holding Len. “Get him a shirt already.”

Len knows the kindness is just temporary or selfish, but he finds himself grateful regardless, grabbing at the shirt and yanking it on with still shaking hands. The thin cotton sticks painfully to his back.

Kronos wraps a hand around the back of his new collar, his glove heavy and rough but also giving Len the strangest tingling sensation the spreads from his neck all across the rest of his skin, and guides him away into the crowd. “– can’t wait for this to be done,” Kronos is muttering to himself. “How long does it goddamn take, a simple edit-and-replace, I could’ve done it in my sleep…”

As they’re walking through the thinning crowd, people get out of their way. A mother and her child, a group of four men clutching pints of beer in their hands despite how early it is…

There’s a burst of blue light and one of the men vanishes. The others keep drinking as if they haven’t noticed.

Len grinds to a halt, gaping at the gap between the men, who are shifting to fill it up.

“What’re you gawking at?” Kronos snaps at him and Len flinches automatically, shaking his head mutely. He knows better than to answer that type of question, said in that type of tone. Kronos grunts, a mechanical whir of noise, and says again, in a slightly calmer voice, “No, really. What were you looking at?”

“There was a man – and then there was this blue light – he disappeared, but his friends don’t even seem to notice it –”

“Oh, that,” Kronos says dismissively. “Timeline adjustment as the new timeline settles into place; it takes a while with a shift this big. He was never born. His friends don’t remember him ever being there, which is why they’re not saying anything.”

“He was never _born_?” Len says, horrified. 

“Yeah. When you make a change this drastic, so far back that you change the entire universe setup, there’s a lot of chances for people not to meet or not get married going back up your family line – oh, _relax_ , there’s at least three Time Masters on the task, we’ll get it fixed back to rights before anyone notices, including you. People inside the timeline don’t notice timeline changes; you’re only noticing it because my personal shield’s covering you right now. Me and my ship, we’re unaffected by the timeline changes.”

Len nods numbly. Lisa still exists, right? He remembers her. He still remembers her. What if he forgets her? Would he even know that he’s forgotten her? Does he have other siblings that he’s forgotten about? No wonder everyone feared the Time Masters, if they could destroy people so totally that no one would even remember the person who the Time Masters took up arms against…

“Of course, when you’re shielded from the timeline changes, there’s the opposite problem where we have to _figure out_ the details of the timeline change just to get around. Take that, for instance. What the hell is _that_?” Kronos gestures.

Len looks where Kronos is pointing. “It’s a dragon,” he says, confused. 

“Yes, I _noticed_ that it’s a giant mechanical dragon,” Kronos says dryly. “Why the hell is it there? What’s the purpose?”

“Um, they’re for protection. Sometimes they help with policing, but they’re mostly used in the wars against other city-states, the other fiefdoms – the League rules it all, of course, but they believe that regular combat encourages innovation and development…uh, the Starling Daedalus, Raymond Palmer, he developed them…”

“Christ, they’re ATOM suits?” Kronos says nonsensically. “Of course they are. Lord of the Rings needs its dragons.”

“I don’t understand –”

“I wasn’t talking to you. Shut the hell up; this is all your fault, anyway.”

Len shuts his mouth. Kronos runs hot and cold and unpredictable, affable one moment and unreasonably angry the next; there’s no reliable way to deal with people like that. You keep your head down and try to play along and it still blows up in your face. 

Not like he has much of a choice.

Kronos is still muttering to himself, sound rendered inaudible by his mask, his hand tightening painfully one second and loosening the next. The only thing Len can manage to make out is a repeated refrain where Kronos is telling himself that he can’t interfere with something. The timeline, maybe. 

Len has no idea where they end up. One minute Kronos is dragging him into an alleyway and then there’s a ramp and suddenly he’s in a metal-grey box without windows, passageways build implausibly thin, the doors magicked to slide open as they approach without even a verbal spell, and it reminds him so much of STAR Tower that he finds himself flinching at every wall without even realizing why.

“Don’t like it?” Kronos asks.

“It’s a prison, of course I don’t like it,” Len snaps back, still unnerved.

Kronos just laughs darkly. “It _is_ a prison,” he agrees. “They all are, every one of them. Glad you’re finally realizing it.”

\----------------------------

Kronos takes Len into a sparse looking bedroom and tells him to take off his shirt. Lips dry, Len complies, barely resisting the urge to try to cover up all his scars with his hands. He has too many for that to work anyway, but he _hates_ having his shirt off and he’s more than a bit afraid of what comes next. He knows too little about the Time Masters to know what to expect now.

He wants to go back home. He should’ve said screw it and taken off with Lisa at the first opportunity.

Kronos sits on the bed, but he just tells Len to turn around and spends a good few minutes staring mutely at the still-agonizing brand on Len’s back. At last he reaches out and presses the reddened flesh next to it with his gloved thumb, causing Len to wince. “You know what this says, right?” Kronos asks contemplatively. “Means you’re mine.”

No shit.

Kronos pulls his hand away; when it comes back, it’s smeared with something chilled and cold that feels like bliss and makes Len’s shoulders relax involuntarily. Even the pain fades and goes away.

“Future has some kick ass Neosporin,” Kronos rumbles behind him. “Good for burns. The scar’ll keep for now. Pity it won’t last.”

“It’s a brand,” Len says, confused. “You can’t eradicate a brand.”

“We’re in a time bubble,” Kronos says, gloved hands slick with the balm sliding over Len’s shoulder blades, catching all the little spots of tension Len’s always had and pressing right into each knot until it releases. It’s only a little painful, but the balm soothes the hurts almost immediately and Kronos is finding every bit of stress Len’s ever stored in his muscles and teasing them out. Len finds his eyes are starting to drift half-closed even as he fights to stay alert. “Doesn’t matter what happens here; we’re just going to change it back. I guess if it takes them too long, this’ll break off into an alternative timeline in the multiverse, but this is such a radical change that the final timeline effects will be probably be minimal when we return to the status quo.”

His hands slide down, thumbs catching the muscle right above the hip and grinding in until Len finds himself making this breathy little moan that he can’t believe came from him.

“That’s why I can interfere,” Kronos says, moving his hands up to Len’s shoulders. “I can’t go after you yet, but here…well, it doesn’t matter what I do here, if you won’t remember it later. No timeline effects.”

Len’s almost distracted enough to miss that, but he hears it and he freezes up because that doesn’t sound good. No consequences means no restrictions. He’s never wanted to know what his father would do without restrictions, and he’s not particularly looking forward to finding out what Kronos wants to do with him now – especially with that worrying mention of not being able to go after Len _yet_. “And what do you want to do?” he asks cautiously.

“I don’t _know_ ,” Kronos growls, his hands tightening on Len’s shoulders, dangerously close to his neck.

“What do you want _me_ to do?” Len tries and abruptly Kronos grabs him by the arm and spins him around almost before he knows what’s happening.

Kronos hasn’t removed his mask and Len can’t see his eyes, can’t read him, can’t even begin to guess what he’s going to do next.

“I want you to say you’re _sorry_ ,” Kronos snarls, suddenly furious and Len is afraid all over again. “I want you to beg my forgiveness and swear you’ll make it up to me. I want you to promise me _everything_ you can think of just to make me happy.” 

He tugs again and suddenly Len is perched in Kronos’ lap, his face only a foot or so away from Kronos’ mask, his legs draped over the larger man’s. “Don’t look at me like that,” Kronos says, the mechanical voice obscuring but not concealing the abrupt lack of anger in his voice. “Don’t you look at me like that.”

“Like what?” Len asks, confused and afraid and cold and he wishes to god that he at least had a shirt on again.

“Don’t look at me like I’m your dad.”

Len starts a little and stares, wide-eyed, at the masked man. “How did you know about that?” he asks, voice hushed. “How did you know…? We’ve never met…I never said…”

Kronos laughs, a low, unamused rumble. “Not yet we haven’t, not like this,” he says and Len nods, because it makes sense that a time traveler would have a different perspective on what constitutes a first meeting. “Tell me, you still got juvie in this timestream?” 

“Yeah, it’s like prison but for kids,” Len says. “They say they’re trying to teach you ‘useful’ skills that you can use when you get out, but really it’s just a source of cheap labor for the merchant guilds.”

“Of course it is. Christ, look at you.”

Len glances down at himself. Skin too pale from his habit of never showing flesh he didn’t have to, too many scars, shitty muscle tone, too skinny – 

“You’re beautiful,” Kronos says, and it even sounds like he means it. “I could look at you all day. Might do it, too. You never let me just look.”

He touches Len’s face softly, running his fingers along his cheekbones, tracing his jawline, down his throat as Len swallows. The dip of his collarbone. Up the back of his neck to the tender spots at the base of the skull. 

Len sighs and lets his eyes drift shut. Kronos might kill him, he might not, there’s nothing Len can do about that, but he’s never had anyone touch him with this sort of reverence. It’s nice. He doesn’t have a lot of nice things in his life. The gloved hands drift over his closed eyes, soft and strangely textured, not like any cloth Len knows. One slides down to cup his jaw, thumb stroking the corner of Len’s mouth.

“Tell me you’re sorry,” Kronos rumbles.

“I’m sorry,” Len says.

“Tell me you’ll never betray me.”

“I won’t do betray you.”

“Tell me again.”

“I won’t betray you,” Len says, enjoying the feel of Kronos’ hands even as he mouths words that mean nothing for things he hasn’t yet done. “Not again. I’m sorry for what I did. I won’t do it again.” He thinks for a second, wondering what else he might be able to say to a man he will one day betray in some way, and offers, “I’ll always be by your side.”

Kronos’ hands still.

“Tell me what you want me to do.”

Len opens his eyes and looks at Kronos, whose blank-eye mask reveals nothing. “What do you mean?”

The hand cupping his jaw stays in place, but the other one runs down, fingers drifting over his collarbone, drifting down his chest and brushing by his nipple, running along Len’s ribs until Len shivers a little before settling on his hip.

“Tell me what you want me to do,” Kronos repeats. “You’re the boss. You decide.”

“Are you serious?”

Kronos’ hand on his hip tightens, but the other one remains soft, gentle. “Entirely.”

“I want to go back to Central,” Len says, testing.

“Of course,” Kronos says, nodding. 

“I want to see my little sister.”

“Not a surprise.”

“I don’t want to be on anybody’s records as a sorcerer.”

“Somehow, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

“You’ll do it?”

“You’re the boss,” Kronos repeats. “What else?”

Len hesitates. That’s really all he wants right now, except maybe for money. Well, there is one other thing, which he hadn’t figured on being able to do till he saved up a bit more cash. “There’s someone I’d like to find, a guy I knew, back in juvie,” he says slowly. “But he’s over in Keystone, last I heard; would it be possible…”

Kronos laughs, jagged and wet and broken and all weird because of the mechanical filter. “You can have whatever you want,” he says, his voice hissing with what might be static or maybe emotion. “Anything you want. As long as you stay.”

The gloved hand on his jaw moves forward and his thumb is pressing at Len’s lips, sliding inside and pressing gently on his tongue. He tastes of metal and of smoke, of leather and gun oil. 

Fuck, Len’s hard. When did that happen?

He swallows around Kronos’ thumb and rocks his hips a little, wanting to get some friction, not sure if he really wants Kronos to notice because holy shit this is incredibly fucked up, even for him, being attracted to the mercurial soldier who just bought him at auction and has the power of life and death over him. 

Kronos’ hand slips off his hips, running light fingers over his belly. Pops open the first button on Len’s pants. Oh yeah, screw logic and rationality, Len definitely wants Kronos to notice. God, he’ll be happy when he’s out of his early twenties; eventually, surely, he’ll age into being able to control his cock rather than the other way around.

He grinds himself down on Kronos’ lap, unable to tell if Kronos is responding under the armor or not, but enjoying the feeling.

“Turn around,” Kronos orders, pulling his hands away. Len scrambles to obey, twisting and Kronos pulling him into position until his back is to Kronos, his legs over his, and Kronos is undoing the rest of the buttons one handed, pulling Len’s pants open and sliding his hand inside until it’s right where Len wants him.

Len moans and tries to grind forward into Kronos’ textured glove.

Kronos reaches his other hand around and tweaks one of Len’s nipples. He wraps his hand around Len’s cock and starts stroking, his grip tight and perfect. Len’s rocking into his hand and Kronos is all around him, big and encompassing, his mask hooked over Len’s shoulder, its metal cold against his cheek. 

Kronos just takes him apart with his hands, one around his cock giving him the pressure he wants, slowing down every time Len thinks this is going to be over embarrassingly quickly, thumbing the slit or reaching down to cup his balls, the other dancing all over him, his chest, his arms, his hip, slipping his fingers into Len’s mouth for him to suck on. 

“You want me to do something for you?” Len gasps at one point, grinding back into Kronos’ lap pointedly. “Better be soon.”

Kronos just laughs, that creaky mechanical voice. If Len remembers any of this, it’s probably going to manifest as an inappropriate reaction to that voice, to the mixed smell of metal and smoke. “Lean forward,” Kronos tells him.

Len does, pulling his legs up until he’s kneeling around Kronos on the bed, rutting into Kronos’ hand. Kronos puts his free hand on Len’s back, tracing Len’s sorcerer’s brand. “Mine,” he growls and his hand tightens around Len in just the right way, his thumb pushing into the spot on his back that sparks somewhere between pain and pleasure. “ _Mine_.”

Len comes so hard he sees stars.

\-----------------------------------

Len wakes up slowly, for once, nice and comfortable like he’s actually gotten a full night’s sleep. Oh, look, he’s been drooling into his mattress, great. He squints around the room, checking the crappy alarm clock he’d bought at a flea market the other week. 11 A.M. Huh. Last time he slept that late, he’d just broken his arm and was drugged half to hell. 

Maybe it was sleeping so late that made him have such weird dreams. 

Okay, did he actually just have a sex dream about a Boba Fett lookalike? That’s just embarrassing. No one is finding out about that, ever.

The dream leaches its way out of his head as he gets up and putters around his second floor apartment, washes his face and brushes his teeth. He’ll have to avoid Dad for the next few days; he doesn’t actually remember how he managed to get away after his dad had tried to goddamn _auction him off_ to the Darbiniyan mobsters – man, the new boss was a serious creep – but clearly he had, since he’d escaped and made it back to his own apartment. Some other guy had gotten into it with the new boss over him, he recalls that much, but he can’t seem to recall his face…

Len tosses his towel back to the rack and misses by a long shot. With a sigh, he leans over to grab it and there’s this godawful twinge in his back, like he’s been stabbed or something. He yanks his shirt up over his head and turns his back to the mirror to try to see what it could be, and he’s got a freaking _burn_ mark there, right between his shoulder blades, shiny and glossy and slowly starting to heal. Not like a cigarette burn, either, it’s the size of a goddamn half-dollar, a circle with a few wavy lines inside of it, like a flame. He must’ve fallen onto something hot and scalded it right into his back. It _was_ hot yesterday; it could’ve been a shoe buckle or a floor design. Stupid heat wave. 

It’s in such an awkward location, too, it’s not like he can reach it himself. At least it looks like it’s healing up all right. Whatever, he’ll have Lisa put some Neosporin on it later. 

Speaking of Lisa, he should pick her up from school today and let her crash with him for a few days until Dad resolves the whole “getting paid” business; he’s not going to risk Dad trying the same thing on her, no way…

Len forgets the dream entirely as he walks out the door, making plans and trying to figure out how long his bank account will stretch if it’s feeding two instead of one. 

He doesn’t notice the entirely unseasonal and quickly melting frost that lines the windows around his mattress.

\---------------------------

It’s not like they’ve fixed all of their problems, but at least Mick comes back to Len’s room after the stupid showdown in the wild west. He’s all amped up from the fight, just like he always is, and now he wants to get laid. Len can’t help but smirk at how familiar it is. Some things never change. He won’t admit that he’s relieved, that he thought Mick might keep ignoring him or, worse, try to go somewhere else to get his energy out, but he’s more than happy to help.

It’s quick and dirty and hard, just how they like it when the adrenaline’s pumping, starting with Mick pushing Len up a wall and ends with Mick shoving Len onto his back and folding him near in half to pound into him as hard as he can. After they’ve both come, Mick gets up to get a washcloth and Len sighs contentedly, pulling off his now stained shirt and tossing it into the laundry before flipping onto his stomach, his head sinking into the decadently soft pillow. 

He hears Mick pad back to bed and makes a vaguely welcoming noise, muffled by the pillow, hoping that Mick will get the idea of what he means and stick around for the night. Maybe they can go again in the morning, something a little slower.

Mick cleans Len up silently but, oddly enough, doesn’t either make a move to leave or to collapse beside him. He just sits there, wringing the washcloth in his hands. 

Ugh, Len really hopes Mick doesn’t want to talk _now_. They’re both men; aren’t they supposed to fall asleep after sex? He’s already two thirds of the way there himself.

And still Mick just sits there. Looks like initiating this bout of awkwardness is going to be up to Len. He turns his head to the side. “What?” he asks, stifling a yawn.

“Nothing,” Mick says, his voice coming out a little choked and strange. He tosses the washcloth into the laundry as well, but instead of doing something normal, he reaches out and touches Len’s back, right between the shoulder blades, with the very tips of his fingers. It’s like he’s tracing something. 

It’s nice. Mick hasn’t touched him softly like that in a while, so Len’s a bit suspicious, but it’s hard to be suspicious when you’ve just come your brains out and now you’re getting petted like a skittish cat, with sleep beckoning for him to just relax into the soft, warm sheets.

“Seriously,” he persists, yawning a little. “What?”

“You remember when you got this?”

Mick must mean one of the scars on Len’s back.

Len tries to think about what might be right between his shoulder blades – for obvious reasons, it’s not exactly a place he looks at all that often – and mostly comes with up with nothing. He’s about to tell Mick that when he abruptly remembers that he got a burn there, some fifteen, twenty years back or so, though he doesn’t recall how exactly; the memory is all distant and vaguely washed out the way old memories are sometimes. Some stupid thing his Dad did, back in his twenties; he’d woken up with it one day. Lisa had thought it was a cool pattern and had teased him for a week or so before forgetting about it.

“It’s a burn,” he says. It’s hardly the first or the last one he’s gotten. He _has_ known Mick for a very long time, after all.

“A brand,” Mick says.

“Does it really matter?”

“No,” Mick says, running his thumb along it. “Guess it doesn’t.”

He looks both strangely guilty and oddly satisfied.

Well, it wasn’t like Len didn’t know that Mick was weird about things related to fire. If anything, after the whole Kronos thing, Len is happy to see that part of his partner starting to surface again. 

Len yawns again and falls asleep to the comforting feeling of Mick’s hand on his back.

Mick waits until Len is asleep to press down on the mark and watch Len’s fingers twitch and flicker with frost in unconscious reaction. 

“Mine,” he says dreamily. “All mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt asked for teenage Len; I give you early twenties Len. Close enough.
> 
> Also, the "magic" in this world operates under the principles of Clarke's third law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. For those who are curious, someone basically changed something very far back in the timeline that caused the League of Shadows to come out of its hiding spot and essentially take over the world. They still encourage the development of technology, thus the role of the Daedalus and of "magic technicians", but they strictly forbid the spreading of information about it to the common populace and encourage that the practice of "magic" be accompanied by verbal "spells" and other unnecessary showmanship. For people like Len, it may as well be magic, and he's always been told that it is, in fact, magic. 
> 
> The technology in this world is more advance than in Flash canon/Earth 1, thus their ability to localize the effects of the Particle Accelerator onto specific individuals. Wells/Thawne is still a dick. I fully expect Barry to lead a rebellion against the entire system one day.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Break the Mold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8554276) by [polytropic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/polytropic/pseuds/polytropic)




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